Cocoa Butter: Food of the Gods

Theobroma cacao. Food of the gods, and the hardest-working butter in the bar.

Where it comes from

Cocoa butter is the fat pressed out of roasted cacao beans, the same beans that become chocolate. The Olmec and Maya were cultivating cacao in Central America over 3,000 years ago, the Aztecs used the beans as money, and when the Spanish brought it to Europe in the 1500s it was a drink for royalty. Cocoa butter as a separate product came later, in the 1800s, when a Dutch chemist worked out how to press the fat from the bean. It was used on skin almost immediately. Most of the world's cacao now grows in West Africa and Ecuador. Ours is certified organic and shows up on the label as Sodium Cocoa Butterate.

What it does in the bar

Cocoa butter is solid at room temperature and melts right at skin temperature, which is what makes chocolate melt in your mouth. In soap, that same property makes a hard, long-lasting bar that feels rich the moment it touches wet skin. It's the main reason a Goodlather bar goes the distance instead of turning to mush in a week.

What it does for skin

Cocoa butter is dense with stearic and palmitic acids and natural antioxidants, and it's been used for generations as a barrier moisturizer for dry skin, stretch marks and rough patches. In our bars it works alongside shea to leave a light conditioning layer behind after you rinse.

Good to know

Unrefined cocoa butter smells faintly of chocolate. Once it's made into soap that scent disappears, so don't worry, your Cedar Oakmoss won't smell like a brownie.

It's in every bar we make: shop the collection.